Talk:Toms River (CDP), New Jersey

Scaling Down
I've stripped most of this page down because it belongs in the Toms River, New Jersey page. Since this is just about the arbitrary area of the Twp. that the census uses to count, it does not reflect any real community or history.Trnj2000 16:57, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

1990 population
According to, the 1990 population was 7,524, and the 2000 population was 86,327. This does not make sense considering the Dover Township, New Jersey population in 1990 was 76,371. I suspect that the 1990 population figure may be incorrect, a typo missing a digit, perhaps 7x,524. Another possibility is that the definition of the CDP changed between the 1990 and 2000 census years. Anyone have any info? --ChrisRuvolo (t) 23:34, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The Toms River, New Jersey explains that the scope of the CDP was changed between the 1990 and 2000 censuses. In 1990, the CDP was just the core of the Township; in 2000, it included all of the mainland portions of Dover Township. It didn't grow tenfold, it changed drastically in definition (and size). Alansohn 04:51, 20 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, it included only the "Village of Toms River" section, which is downtown. This is why I question the usefullness of CDP pages, since they only refer to an arbitrary area designated by the census that changes every 10 years.Trnj2000 13:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I still think that the CDP information is useful, but I agree that we have to be careful in presenting historical data. Even municipalities change in size, increasing or decreasing with annexations, but they do not compare with the essentially arbitrary remapping of CDPs that the Census Bureau may impose every decade. Nor do I know of any way to discern if there were substantive changes in a CDPs size between enumerations. As long as the limitations are understood, there seems no reason not to provide the information. Alansohn 14:04, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I know it's been 17 years since the last comments here, but I do think this illustrates entirely the issue with CDPs as a whole, namely that their boundaries are not permanently fixed in law like actual municipalities, which change far less frequently, but merely arbitrary groupings for the convenience of the Census Bureau to conduct their count for that given year. In other words, they're not actually places, as the Census Bureau redraws the map every census. Our treatment of them as though they were actually permanent ongoing entities is fundamentally flawed, and needs to be reconsidered. We misrepresent what CDPs actually are, accounting conveniences that exist on paper with no permanent existence, by trying to treat them equivalently to actual villages and hamlets.

I also think this discussion illustrates the issue with this CDP in particular. Its arbitrary existence is not independently notable from the township it comprises most of, to the point where I'd say merge the articles. oknazevad (talk) 14:21, 29 June 2024 (UTC)